After the Evening Movie

Lulling in the curiosity of an evening movie,
the four of us look like pieces broken off a relic,
small and large fragments
caught in an archaeologist’s sieve.

Ribs, elbows, shoulders and knees
lean freely against one another.
The illusion, flickering, reflects
off the screen onto the ionic architecture of our flesh.

“We might have been happy,” you utter
with the same compassionate tone
you use when talking about the dog tied to a pole in the courtyard
on that fearful night of lightning.
We turn out the lights, get ready for bed,
our heads glowing like lemons in the dark,
sour and dissatisfied.

“We could…if…”

We hide beneath a suffocating embrace
simply to avoid speaking,
simply because we fear that we might have to tell a story,
a story whose ending we don’t yet know,
because we no longer hear barking in the courtyard.

Clay turns on its wheel
unable to realize
that it is history itself,
that same story
told over and over in countless ways.

Luljeta Lleshanaku, born in Elbasan, Albania, began publishing her work in 1991 after the overthrow of the Stalinist regime. Her critically acclaimed books of poetry include Yellow Marrow, for which she won the Albanian National Book Award, Fresco, and, most recently, Child of Nature.